> Donna, since your daughter - Jennifer - seemed to pick
 > up words via "osmosis" how can you attribute her good reading to
 > the teaching of heavy phonics?
She learned both ways. Some words she knew because she'd ask when I was 
reading aloud..."osmosis", for lack of any better word. :)  Those words were 
mostly of the "gotta learn 'em by sight" type. Her first word read was the 
word "my".
Story: My mom made a cloth book for Jennifer's first Christmas. My mom, as 
some here are aware, is an avid seamstress. Cloth books are wonderful for 
babies - they can't rip, can't be colored on, and can take chewing on as 
well. As Jennifer got older, and I was reading to her, she would bring me 
books and say, "read!" She had me read this little cloth book, too - she'd 
figured out that it opened up just like a book, and had those funny squiggly 
lines on it that were words, so it must be a book. So I read the book - not 
just once, but over a period of time, many times. There weren't many words in 
this book - only the title ("My Book of Numbers"), numbers, and one word for 
each thing on the page ("1 ball""2 cats" etc). In the meantime, too, I was 
teaching her the alphabet and the letter sounds as well.
    When she was 2 1/2, not quite 3, she pointed to the first word of the 
title once. She said, "That says 'my'." I almost fell over in shock. A few 
minutes later, I went to our little dry-erase board and wrote the word 'My.' 
She said, "that says 'my'." I went to the other side of the easel and wrote 
the word 'my.' She said, "that says 'my'. It has an m, mmmmmmm, and a y. My." 
From then on, every time I would read aloud a book with larger print, she'd 
pick out the word "my".
 > I'd like to discuss this issue but first I'd like to
 > know how you feel about whole language reading programs? Since I have
For the most part, pthththththththththth, but only because it was not 
implemented correctly in the US. This method would have been more successful 
here if a) teachers had been trained FIRST, b) the teachers would not have 
dropped the phonics part of it or deemphasized it (the New Zealander that 
developed the program had phonics in there, most certainly!!!!), c) they 
would not "forget" that kids need to learn the parts of speech.
                                 -donna
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